Deep Fake of CFO on Videocall Used to Defraud Company of $25M

Recently, the risk grew far greater as it was reported a deep fake videocall showing an AI-generated multi-national company's CFO and other co-workers were used to convince a HK branch employee to make 15 transfers totaling HK$200M (approximately US$25M) into 5 local HK bank accounts. Reports indicate that the initial email request seemed suspicious to the employee, but then she was invited to a videochat, purportedly over a common personal communications app where the deep fake of the CFO, and apparently or other employees, were used to instruct her to make the transfers. The deep fakes were apparently AI-generated videos created from past videochat recordings obtained from the individuals. From the reports, the deepfakes were more like a recording and would not be able to interact and respond to questions, and may have had somewhat limited head movement. It would appear that at least one of the hackers was a live participant orchestrating things so, after allowing the HK employee to introduce herself, the deepfake images informed her to make the transfers. It was only after the 15 transfers were made that the employee contacted their UK headquarters, only to be informed there was no such instruction.

Gen-AI also seems involved in other incidents where deep fake images of individuals contact their loved ones to request "urgent funds," including indicating they have been kidnapped or otherwise in dire need. Further, we are increasingly seeing deep fake images of celebrities and even public officials. Moreover, it appears that hackers are using AI to sift large digital data to identify more convincing approaches for their scams as well as weaknesses in software coding or network security.